


'Last time, it was forever'

by themegalosaurus



Series: SPN episode codas [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Episode: s11e08 Just My Imagination, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lucifer's Cage, Season/Series 11, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-06 16:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16836415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: Coda to episode 11x08, 'Just My Imagination': Sam contemplates Hell





	'Last time, it was forever'

Last time Sam was going to the Cage, the dread threading tendrils through his tendons and bones was bearable mostly because of what he didn’t know. ‘Torture’, 'forever’. The words meant nothing, not really. What’s a broken arm or a slow-drained vein to what two pissed-off archangels can do in five minutes? What’s eternity, when you’re twenty-seven years old?

No, the things that got him back then were the real things, the ones he’d have to do without. The smell of laundry. The springs of a too-thin mattress. Dean’s shitty music. Other people’s faces. Dogs. The sky. Any of it, noticed, could have him trembling on the edge of a breakdown; but the big stuff, the hell stuff, was too indistinct really to feel.

This time, though, what’s scaring Sam is suffocating in its specificity. He understands the horror, now, of centuries’ sensory deprivation; recognises the individual tone of the snap of each of his ribs. He’s familiar with the sight and sensation of his gut unspooling before him. He can feel the shiver of Lucifer’s lips brushing icy at the back of his neck.

Last time, it was forever and enormous and Sam just dove in, unblinking. This time, the details are everywhere, catching inside his skull.


End file.
